Much of what I decide to blog about blog comes from patterns I see when odd things catch my attention. Sometimes they come from two things juxtaposed. In this case, I’ve got two things and the glimmer of a pattern, but I haven’t yet been able to capture it and set it down. It does talk about one of the two issues closest to my heart – how to remake an effective Democratic Party that’s worth supporting.
First, Mickey Kaus’ scathing commentary on Bill Bradley’s “pyramid” op-ed.
It’s a small pyramid, but perfectly formed: Bill Bradley’s recent NYT op-ed was so well-constructed my immediate thought, like The Note’s, was that he couldn’t possibly have written it himself. But his prescription was all too familiar and, yes, a recipe for disaster! Bradley wants the Democrats to emulate Republicans and generate ideas from a stable, pyramid-like institutional base–with “Democratic policy organizations” engaged in the “patient, long term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas.” Just plug in a candidate at the top of this institutional pyramid and … victory!
The problem, of course, is that the Democratic party’s most stable institutional elements are also its most problematic elements: 1) unions; 2) the civil rights and Latino lobbies; 3) the senior lobby (AARP); 4) institutional feminists (NOW); 5) trial lawyers; 6) Iowa-caucus style “progressives;” and 7) Hollywood emoters. If a national problem could be solved without trampling on the interests of this institutional base, Democrats would have solved it in the decades when they were in power. What’s left are the problems that can’t be solved–even solved in accordance with liberal principles–without trampling on these liberal interest groups: competitiveness, for example, or public education, or entitlement reform. If the Dems’ permanent institutional base is what gets to “develop” and “hone” the ideas to be adopted by the party’s presidential nominee, then the Democrats will in perpetuity be the party of union work rules, lousy teachers, mediocre schools, protectionism, racial preferences, unaffordable entitlements, amnesty for illegals and offensive rap lyrics! That winning collection gets you, what, 35%?
Currently, the Democrats’ only hope is that once every four years a maverick candidate will come along who tells the party’s permanent institutional base to shove it and actually fashion an appealing platform. The party’s post-Vietnam presidential winners–Carter and Clinton–both fit this pattern. Bradley seems to regard Clinton’s success as a failure because it wasn’t replicated. But it wasn’t replicated because people like Bradley sneered at it, and played instead to the party’s reliable, pyramid-like base. …Over the long run, of course, the Democrats’ institutional problem may at least partly solve itself as the role of unions in the private economy asymptotically approaches zero. … P.S.: Bush’s problems selling his Social Security plan suggest that not everything generated by a mighty idea-honing institutional GOP pyramid succeeds. Crazy thought: Maybe the substance of ideas, and not the mechanism that produces them, is what counts.
Then I read Robert Greene’s article in this week’s LA Weekly and an article on the current – highly progressive – City Council’s failure to get very much done.
Now, after two years of the supposedly progressive Los Angeles City Council, there is — what? Community-impact studies, a cornerstone of a social-justice movement to give labor and neighbors a say in major development, failed first in the Community Redevelopment Agency, then in the City Council. A proposed ban on grocery-selling big-box superstores turned into an ordinance that simply requires the Wal-Marts of the world to jump through a few extra hoops — but only in certain parts of town. Inclusionary zoning — a mandate that builders include affordable units — has been debated forever but seems perpetually a day, or maybe a week or a month, away from a vote. Housing is still beyond the reach of average wage earners, while many apartments remain unsafe and substandard. Schools are a failed warehouse system for the city’s youth. Cops in a reformed, enlightened Los Angeles Police Department still beat and shoot to death black men and boys in South L.A., and innocent children still are murdered in the crossfire of gang warfare.
So what happened? Where is the progressive legislation? Why is there no motion to second? Why are progressives split on the city’s leadership? Why is this City Council, far from being the most charismatic in years, so downright — well — boring?
“Oh, so you’ve noticed,” said an aide from an earlier council who now works for a labor union. “Not much going on there, is there? A lot of talk. Not much walk.”
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something there…what do you think?
Hmmm, bunch of California leftists take over, and don’t seem to be very focused or able to get things done in the real world. Trying very hard to restrain the irresistable shot… but really, this surprises anyone?
Kaus’ points were very sharp. Many of the major problems that are left, as legacies from the Great Society welfare state et. al., are those the liberal coalition is maladapted to solve. Or consist of foreign issues it has chosen to be maladapted to solve, a maladaptation that its present coalition locks in place.
The solution is adaptation. Which has to start by looking at the real problems with a clear eye and acknowledging opposing critiques. It can then progress to figuring out whose side you’re on, and crafting policies that actually address those problems and help those people. “As Britain’s Whigs did.”:http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006520
As for Bradley’s article, it was a joke. He describes an “inverted pyramid” that goes from think-tanks to radio talk shows, and believes it’s the key to Republican dominance.
Y’know, Bill, there are these institutions called Universities… perhaps you’ve heard of them. They seem to attract billions of dollars. Their social sciences faculty are overwhelmingly liberal, when they aren’t outright Marxist and/or Fascists (same difference).
Oddly, despite all this intellectual investment, and a mainstream media with far larger reach than talk radio that is generally very sympathetic and almost as reliably liberal (MSM only 4:1 instead of 10:1, though, according to Pew surveys et. al.), the returns in terms of intellectual heft and public credibility have mostly been negative.
Hmm, why is that, Bill?
Perhaps it isn’t about a funding strategy, or having media messengers. If it was, the USA’s universities and major media outlets like the NY TImes, LA Times, CBS, ad nauseam should make liberalism utterly dominant right now.
Is it?
Maybe, Bill, the problem is that the ideas animating your party are badly flawed, and that their deconstruction by both a conservative critique and general experience has never really been addressed and answered. Certainly not in the universities, which act as seminaries for left-liberal thought but would rather ban or exclude opposing views than debate them. Nor in the political sphere… and without an intellectual re-examination, all the political sphere can do is recapitulate the same intrinsic flaws that made the conservative critique potent: public choice theory, regulatory gridlock, the ratchet effect, interest group liberalism, the coalition-based problems Kaus describes, etc.
And you know, marketing won’t solve that.
Now, there is nothing wrong with a pyramid structure. It’s very effective, and I recommend it. But it’s equally important to have ideas that actually work in terms of human economics _and practice._ Which is why A.L.’s “Skybox Liberalism’ screeds are so important, because that’s exactly what’s being insulated against.
There was some “decent discussion of the ‘Intellectual Infrastructure’ concept over at WorldChanging.com.”:http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002457.html#comments Maybe it will help some.
There’s nothing left in the Left.
Some of their beliefs (Marxism) have been utterly disproved. Others (fair labor standards, basic government regulation) have become mainstream. They accomplished what they set out to do.
Schumer’s pyramid may work – but only if the Base of the pyramid has the balls to challenge those at the top and say “Time to move on.” When the Base of the pyramid has the courage and conviction to tell Nancy Pelosi to shove it, the Democrats will start to recover.
They don’t even have to do too much. As the more socially progressive of the two parties, they’re already half-way to being Libertarian. A little in the way of more market friendly regulation and taxation and they’ll be able to peel off chunks of the Republican support. A belief in the accountability of institutions (the UN, Baathist governments) will also go a long way to bringing them back in from the cold.
But first they must abandon the ideas which the American center have also abandoned – mainly class struggle and command-and-control economics.
I was recently lamenting the descent of Robert Mugabe’s Marxist government into stalinism, when I was studiously informed that Robert Mugabe’s government was not Marxism. That’s the point isn’t it? Marxism in practice never is Marxism.
After September 11, I fell out with many (almost all in fact) of my progressive friends because I would not blame America first, and I did not see ideas like corporate tax increases and full employment as sustainable solutions to any problems.
I think the Democrats need to scrape off the labor unions and the Michael Moores and come up with something like a Contract With America.
If the D’s scrape off the labor unions and Hollywood, where will they get 1) money, and 2) volunteers for local organizing?
Kaus nailed it:
“Crazy thought: Maybe the substance of ideas, and not the mechanism that produces them, is what counts.”
Not spin, not marketing, not packaging, no selling, just _*better ideas*_.
Or ideas at all. Clinton has some but he has been repudiated by the far left of his party.
“Nice h**ters on that babe over there…”
Oh, wait–you really think it was some other kinds of ideas he had???
bq. As the more socially progressive of the two parties, they’re already half-way to being Libertarian. A little in the way of more market friendly regulation and taxation and they’ll be able to peel off chunks of the Republican support.
I could join *THAT* party, banish those touting the communist manifesto to the ashheap of history, and toss out the more hairbrained ideas of the Libertarians such as doing away with the FDA and the border control et al. retain the live and let live, stay out of my bedroom AND my wallet et all. i could join that party, and a good third of those calling themselves republicans (the libertarianish Larry Elder types) would certainly flock to that.
But the freedom oriented wont sleep with commies, the religion of 174 million skulls is even more evil than the nazi idiology, even as the national Socialist was only a flavor of the international kind. Its objectively proved its the most toxic evil idology the planet earth has ever seen.
So untill you kick those out of bed, you can count me, and everyone like me, on the other side.
bq. Marxism in practice never is Marxism.
And wouldnt be any better if it was, even if the rulership exampled, and disproved the fraud, of the perfected socialist man, the rest of the population would still be incompatable with it.
Marxism is so materiastic and “scientific”, it left out the humans, who are motivated by factors that are often not materialistic and hardly ever scientific. Marxisms great for droids, incompatable with humanity. And humans dont live very happily treated like mass produced identical asexual (in the behavioral sense, Harvard, ahem) droids.
Their social sciences faculty are overwhelmingly liberal, when they aren’t outright Marxist and/or Fascists (same difference).
You’re really jumping off the deep end, man. I wish I could say that seething, open contempt wasn’t working for you conservatives- but I’d be wrong.
—
I don’t think it’s going to be possible to rebuild the Dems, unless we can make the economy an issue. The GOP has been succesful in taking that off the table since GHWB, and I expect they’ll be able to keep it up. Of course they’ve had the help of a couple of million boatloads of affordable Chinese goods, and I don’t expect that to stop anytime soon either.
A.L. talks about a party that represents the “powerless” in the face of the “powerful.” Sounds nice, but it’s hard to read that and not think about class or economics. Those aren’t our issues anymore. The closest we come to class-warfare now is what you read here about “bobos” or “skyboxes.”
VD, the labour unions and the Moore-ons are 2 different groups – and while the latter is dispensible, I suspect that the former is not.
The Moore-ons are not a traditional base for the party whose interests (defeating America?) define its purpose. The unions are, and indeed when you say “unions” it’s really shorthand for “the working class”. Without the working class (and BTW, Clinton was great at connecting with them), there’s no model for the Democratic Party that has any resonance – unless they want to turn themselves into the party of ethnic factionalism, which they’ve gone part way toward doing.
Indeed, if the Democrats are going to revive as a mainstream party rather than “skybox leftists + government clients”, I believe labour unions will be an important piece of that puzzle. The key is not to see them as the whole working class, but as a useful ally who may help you reach, talk to, and organize that larger segment.
If the Dems give that up, they’ve lost their soul. They may find a new one down the road with some other configuration (politicians can and do), but it will be a log and painful road. Worse, to the extent they try to lean on old resonances without being what that implies, they’ll have a big gap in their armor AND slow the transition to a new resonance.
Stale invocations of “two Americas” are a perfect example. That won’t cut it – and didn’t. You can repeat that stuff all day but (a) it has to match peoples’ experience of deprivation and (b) they have to believe that you’d be any better.
The next step is adding enough of the lower-middle middle class, and a combination of cultural issues and lack of interest in their interests has schismed large chunks away. Hence the decline of the New Deal/Great Socierty coalition, and the steady decline in Democratic Party fortunes since the early 70s that has now culminated in GOP dominance and non-political types making casual jokes about the Dems’ weakness as a standard shorthand for poor performance/ futility.
Gotta say, Steve Sailer has a provocative analysis on that score which “suggests a very different way of looking at those interests”:http://www.amconmag.com/2004_12_06/cover.html (revolves around home ownership, most middle-class families’ biggest asset). If I’m casting about tryng to fix my party, I’d give it a serious look and think about what the things he’s tracking (and other “offbeat” analyses I can find) might be telling me – even if it’s something I don’t want to hear.
This is a time to think outside the boxes – another area that isn’t a Democratic Party strength. But then, it takes 3 major elections to teach a polician anything, and failure to accept 2000 puts the horizon date at 2012 before anything sinks in.
Prepare for a long slog.
Based on Bradley’s article, the Dems have gone from denial (2000-2002) to anger (2002-2005) and we’re now beginning to see the bargaining stage of “framing” “duplicating the GOP inverted pyramid”, and other witchdoctery (2005-???). And after that, there’s still depression (if Hilary loses, you can start a clinical practice for skybox types and get rich), acceptance (which takes a while to work out in politics), and change to go.
SAO: the ratios in the humanities around 10:1 liberal-conservative are based on data from several different surveys. For anyone who has actually been in a university during the last decade, that won’t surprise.
Next steps: Look at the number of university courses still teaching Marxist economics as part of the curriculum and a component of courses. Look at the profusion of academic Marxist journals et. al. (for entertainment, comprare that the the number of conservative academic journals). Then have a gander at the numbers of professors who are still, over a decade after communism’s demise, self-professed Marxists. It isn’t a small number. The repressive “velvet Maoism” of most universities’ approach to regulation of their campuses hasn’t been lost on observers either.
Any of this can be confirmed by simple observation, and backed by a long stream of statistical surveys. There’s nothing off the deep end, or even exceptional, about it.
It is a obvious “deep end” situation, though, and that’s why it’s ‘working’ for the right. I expect the right to use it as more and more of a pressure point, a la Belmont Club’s “Mordor” scenario. A little bit of a spotlight can and will generate a steady stream of Ward Churchills for the public’s edification. And there will be consequences.
As for Marxism = Fascism, while there are some inherent differences, Hayek explained their deep and inevitable similarities in practice over 50 years ago. Everything we’ve seen since then has only confirmed his analysis…. but, “as Mona Chren notes and so amply documents,”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060579412/qid=1112946172/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/102-7092923-6768969?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 this too has been a long-standing left-liberal blind spot. See also “Paul Hollander”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1560009543/qid=1112946213/sr=8-16/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i15_xgl14/102-7092923-6768969?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Ultimately, liberalism’s problem is that Marxism is dead – and while democratic socialism is different from Marxism in some absolutely critical respects, it owed more of a debt to that ideology than it likes to acknowledge. So that underlying framework needs to be replaced with _something._
They’ve tried Fanonite 3rd World fetishism and ethnic balkanization as alternatives, but neither have proved sustainable. A Fremenite focus on environmentalism as religion has also been tried, but [a] it has fallen off the radar screen as a mobilizing political issue; [b] capitalism is moving in and creating an alternative path to greenness the GOP can use; [c] the religious environmentalism approach is starting to get deconstructive pushback that’s particularly damaging to a sub-set of science; and [d] in practice, this religious approach has often set up direct conflicts with the interests of the working classes – LMC.
My recommendation is to start by looking at the people (working class, LMC) whose lives you really want to improve with your ideology, and go from there based on what we now know in the 21st century.
Joe, the fact that the Repubican hard money comes from small contributions of 50 bucks, compared to the democratic reliance of big money like Soros, dont bode well as the indicator they have the “working class” behind them.
In fact, what we do see, is the specter of the liberal elete sneering at the “stupid little people”, “Jesusland” et al.
The election was over, and they showed even more energy making sure they will lose the next one than they showed attempting to win the last one.
Well unless you count their gunfire into our field offices and ripping signs out of the hands of crying 4 year olds.
Such things cement the idea that there is a difference, them and US, and that suits us just fine.
The Democrats best hope of winning back some power is for the Republicans to trip up, which they will. The American people are extremely leery of one party rule, and the corruption of power is quite real.
The question is, what will Democrats do with that power? If their agenda doesnt have a popular mandate, simply winning the offices wont help much, or for long. Thats the ‘ideas’ problem. The country has seen what the have to offer, and just as the Los Angeles case shows, even the progressives themselves know the outcome of their policies and refuse to apply them to themselves. Sure they are still willing to have other people live by their agenda, but letting a low income family move in next door? No way! Realistics, _effective_ programs with quantifiable results are necessary. The escalation of failure programs dont, and wont fly with the American people. If the Dems could, for instance, break the Teachers Union to their will instead of vice versa they could develop a true wedge issue by proposing some real, effective school reform. But that takes 1)political courage and 2)Idealogical flexibility, ie new ideas.
Joe, Labor Unions do not equate to the working class in the minds of most Americans. I live in San Diego and in this town, you can talk to anyone on the street about _”Union Members”_ and find that tends to translate into _”government employee with an overly generous pension that is bankrupting our city and state”_. Now, it is true that those golden pensions are really only for the highly paid city officials, but that is not the general perception.
Also, we just had a very long drawn out labor strike of food service workers that decided to stop workers because they were going to have to start making ten dollar co-pays for healthcare (or that was the general perception). The strike was highly unpopular and there was little sympathy for the “man-on-the-street” union members going without pay while their union bosses didn’t miss a paycheck.
Finally, almost all the problems with the California state budget are related to labor unions. The California Teachers’ Association and the California Prison Guards’ Union are over-bloated political behemoths and huge drains on the state budget.
Labor Unions, especially those associated with government, are very very unpopular. If you recall the Homeland Security debate following 9-11, the Republicans were able to cast the debate as the Democrats being more concerned about rewarding their _”BIG Labor”_ cronies than they were about national security.
The average _”worker”_ doesn’t belong to a union and doesn’t want to shoulder the cost of people that do.
Which gets back to why the Democrats get no traction out of their _”two americas”_ slogans. When discussing Social Security, they say they will only discuss private accounts _in addition_ to the existing program. That translates into a tax increase in the mind of most workers. When decrying the runaway deficit spending, the only solution is repealing the Bush tax cuts, which also translates into a tax increase in the minds of most workers.
The Republicans are highly vulnerable at the moment, but the Democrats are failing to put together a coherent and believable message.
Democrats own the labor unions, but not the union workers themselves who are increasingly trending republican. The fact that almost 100% of union dues go to the party nearly half the union opposes cant last forever.
A.L. has discussed the phenomenon of “SkyBox Unions” here before.
That’s why one shouldn’t take “unions” to equal “the working class” – and government unions are certainly nothing of the sort.
But if you’re serious about being a working class – LMC party, it’s inevitable that unions will have a serious role to play. Foolish to suggest otherwise. Equally foolish, of course, to stop there.
In fact, the rethinking must start with the policies/ideas and _then_ ask where and how unions fit in. As opposed to taking the unions themselves as the starting point (the mistake of Lowi’s interest group liberalism) and crafting policies from there.
Once that approach becomes the thinking frame, the Dems may observe some interesting trends in the new economy, and begin to discover ways to create institutions that work with those. Some may be unions, some may be something else, all would be focused on bettering the lot of the people Democrats are trying to help.
If they succeed, it will give those organizations strength. Strength they can lend to the Democratic Party, if the relationship has been fostered well and the GOP hasn’t managed to woo attractive competitor organizations.
As an aside… unless the conservative tide is rolled back, it’s also reasonable to expect some laws around using forced union dues for political purposes. But closed shops aren’t as common in the USA thanks to right to work laws, so the union contribution patterns may actually be fairly stable.
If the goal is to ditch the Marxists– whose influence on the party is being ridiculously exaggerated here, then the candidate is Hillary Clinton. Nothing will scare away the moonbats faster than another Clinton who is hawkish and soft pro-choice.
Joe, I attended probably the 2 most liberal schools in the US (SFSU & Berkeley), as well as Concordia (!). I majored in politics, minored in econ. From my firsthand experience, I can tell that you’re exaggerating here, both about the liberalism/marxism on campus and the anti-semetism at Concordia. No doubt elements of both exist, but I think the whining and stamping feet does more to enable and promote the radicals at the expense of the majority of moderate (and left-leaning) academics.
I’m all for more balance in education, but the Horowitz approach is obviously not aiming for balance. I think it’s aiming for system just as dysfunctionally bent, yet in the other direction.
Joe – I think VD is largely right concerning the unions. The strongest American unions right now are in economic sectors where there is a lack of market competition – government, publicly owned utilities, education, police/prison/fire, and government run/mandated health care. It’s particularly evident in California, where all of these groups are relatively large, and conventional manufacturing unions never had a strong presence or large footprint. YMMV in the former UAW/USW/etc. strongholds, but at least in the blue states, the unions are increasingly hard to distinguish from other government client groups,.
I have no love of the Democrats but the idea that Republicans have any ideas is bunk when it come to domestic policies. Come to Pennsylvania and show me an idea they have had and implemented. The Republicans control the Senate and the House. The only way they can find money for sinecures for their hacks is to takeover hack positions in Philadelphia form Democrats(We will take over the parking authority and give the proceeds to the school system?! The takeover is under federal investigation) People are leaving the state in droves. The public school system is uniformly bad and failing. Employment and income growth continue their slow steady downward crawl
The only thing the national party is good for is making sure that they steal every dollar in sight by reducing taxes on capital and raising them on wages, gasoline, tobacco, etc. Or deciding what is the best way for you to die.
They deny that the full faith and credit of the Federal Government is behind the Special IOU’s for the Social Security System because they aren’t tradeable at the commodity exchanges in Chicago. Savings bonds are not tradeable either but your bank takes them.
I have yet to see a Republican talk about removing senority from teacher placement in school reform locally or nationally. Education reform is now a policy of passing a test instead of instituting programs that teach people how to learn let alone provide the foundation of learning the ability to read.
Stop already with marxists socialists liberals libertarians conservatives et al and realize the big domestic issue is how do we provide the economy with the resources it needs as it pertains both to the marketplace and government
bq. _So what happened? Where is the progressive legislation? Why is there no motion to second? Why are progressives split on the city’s leadership?_
Let us listen in on an LA City Council meeting. I hear somebody saying:
Don’t bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Don’t bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Roll another one
Just like the other one
You’ve been holding on to it
And I sure will like a hit
[chorus]
Roll another one
Just like the other one
That one’s burned to the end
Come on and be a real friend
[chorus]
“Don’t Bogart That Joint”:http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/introjs.htm?/~acsa/songfile/DONTBOGA.HTM
Lyrics: Elliot Ingber
Music: Elliot Ingber
Played by Little Feat’s Paul Barrere and Bill Payne with Phil & Friends.
The original verson (on the soundtrack of “Easy Rider”) was by Fraternity Of Man. It was subsequently covered by Little Feat.
Recordings
1969 Easy Rider (Soundtrack)
1988 The Last Record Album (Little Feat)
Robert M: I like your style, a punch per label.
But in the original article, citing the list of democrat constituencies, a vital element was left out … the one that President of Coalition For a Fair Judiciary Kay Daly (an associate of the stopactivistjudge.org group) defined as those pretending to be journalists and intellectuals.
Raymond,
Nothing wrong with eliminating the FDA provided you replaced it with something like a UL for the medical insurance industry.
The labor unions by history and constitution are an important part of the “class struggle”.
Except they no longer represent the struggling classes.
The poor in America have government security. The rich have money security. It is the middle class that is getting hammered.
The uniion members may be middle class, the unions however, do not represent middle class values. I don’t see how you fix that.
In any case the #1 market for unions is government employees. Which are rightly seen by a lot of the country as sucking the blood from taxpayers.
Now out of all that where is something you can build on?
The core problem as many have pointed out is that the left is welded to socialism (anti-business). That is not a recipe for any kind of working America.
Huey Long socialism sent my parents to college in LA and the family now is in the eduated class. Nothing like this is coming along in this country but in the developing world this mentality is alive and well.
Joe Katzman, you assert without any proof that a party which wants to truly represent the interests of the “working class” will have to work with the unions. Maybe in some Northeastern states, that’s true. But in California, the West, and the South, only government employees and occasional overpaid private-sector employees belong to unions. VDs critique of unions is spot-on.
The Republicans find ways to appeal to working-class Americans without reflexively kowotowing to unions. The Democrats need to figure out effective ways to do the same. Opposing private pensions and making houses more expensive isn’t likely to be effective.
Anthony….
Yes, I assert that if you want to work with the working class, ignoring the unions is not an option. Even if other avenues are also pursued, per “comment #16”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006643.php#c16
While unions have more than their share of faults, abandoning them entirely strikes me as amazingly bad politics for the Democrats. It’s way too early for that. But the policies must start from the interests of those they wish to represent, and then they can figure where the unions et. al. can fit in and what else they might do.
Do it the other way, as they’ve been doing per the “interest group liberalism” approach, and the Dems (and long term, the unions too) are cruisin’ for trouble.